Standing
Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) was a San
Francisco Bay-Area Marxist-Maoist
collective whose origins dated back to Roots Against War (RAW), “a
group of young people of color who came together to fight against
the Gulf War in the early 1990s.” Several of RAW’s leaders were
veterans of the Revolutionary
Communist Youth Brigade, the youth wing of the Revolutionary
Communist Party. Filling its ranks mostly with nonwhites,
RAW engaged in “confrontational” and “militant” forms of
“direct
action” that often saw its members “defying police commands”
or “plunging through police lines and barricades.”

When
RAW dissolved
in the spring of 1992, several
of its members collaborated with other local activists (some of
whom were from the Bay Area Coalition For Our Reproductive
Rights) intent on establishing a new group “to
preserve and carry forward RAW’s radical militant energy into a
more systematic organizational form.” These efforts ultimately led
to the creation of STORM by 8 co-founders in the fall of 1994.
Their first public act took place on November 2 of that year,
when they protested against Proposition 187, a ballot initiative
(which California voters had approved the previous day) designed to
deny social-welfare benefits to illegal immigrants in the
state. STORM characterized Prop 187 as a “racist,
anti-immigrant” measure.

STORM described
the period immediately preceding its founding as “a moment of deep
crisis for the international Left and growing momentum for sections
of the imperialist class.” This was because “the Soviet Union had
fallen in 1989,” “China was turning towards capitalism,” and
“the fall of the world’s first and most powerful socialist nation
undermined the material strength and public legitimacy of the Left
around the world.” As a result, said STORM, “The global ruling
class began to build towards a neo-liberal ‘New World Order’ in
which the United States would become the world’s one and only
super-power and in which corporations would plunder the resources and
people of the world without limit.”

Meanwhile STORM
complained
that “the Right,” which was in “firm control of the U.S.
government,” was “on a vicious offensive … successfully rolling
back the gains from the civil rights movement and other freedom
movements of the 1960s and 1970s…. [It] slashed funding for social
programs like education and welfare – securing profits for
corporations and helping pay for U.S. imperial aggression. It
curtailed the civil liberties of people of color and poor people
throughout the United States.”

Membership in STORM was by
special invitation only; invitees were carefully selected with an
eye toward meeting strict demographic quotas: each new “class”
consisted of at least 75 percent “people of color” and 60 percent
women.

Advocating
“change on a revolutionary scale,” STORM sought to broaden its
influence by calling for “solidarity among all oppressed people –
working class people, people of color, women, queer people – in the
fight for ‘total’ liberation from all systems of oppression –
centrally including capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy,
homophobia and able-ism.” The group’s early activities were based
in “low-income communities of color.”

In 1996 STORM held a
demonstration in Oakland to
protest President Bill
Clinton’s “decision to gut welfare.” At issue was the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act, which was successful in moving large numbers of people off
the welfare rolls and into jobs.

As
of 1997 STORM was still a small organization, consisting of
only nine members. In an effort to increase its numbers and
expand its influence, this core group studied the
organizing models of Saul
Alinsky, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Marxism-Leninism.
Convinced that “revolutionary Marxist politics would be central to
the development of a successful liberation movement in this country,”
all of STORM’s members “developed a basic understanding of and
commitment to revolutionary Marxist politics – with a particular
emphasis on the historical experiences of Third World communist
movements.”

In 1998 STORM created
a Political Education Committee called “411” which schooled new
and established members in “Marxist ‘basics,’ … philosophy,
wage exploitation, capitalism, imperialism and globalization, Lenin’s
theories of the state, revolution and the party,… the political
ideas of Mao Tse-tung and Antonio
Gramsci … Marxist feminism, transgender liberation, and the
Palestinian liberation struggle.”

STORM also promoted the
concept of “Urban
Marxism,” the belief that “the urban space was now the
central site of revolutionary struggle, just as the factory and the
point of production were in the days of Karl
Marx.”

STORM avidly “upheld the Marxist critique
of capitalist exploitation”; “agreed with Lenin’s analysis of
the state and the party”; and “found inspiration and guidance in
the insurgent revolutionary strategies developed by Third World
revolutionaries like Mao Tse-tung and Amilcar Cabral.” Cabral was a
late Marxist revolutionary leader (of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape
Verde Islands) who lauded Lenin
as “the greatest champion of the national liberation of the
peoples.”

In July 1998, three of STORM’s core members went
to South Africa to attend the Congress of the South African Communist
Party, where they observed first-hand “how
powerful Marxism has been and can be for liberation movements
made up of and led by people of color.”

From late 1998
through 1999, STORM’s influence in the Bay Area grew dramatically.
One of its defining endeavors
was a crusade to win the freedom of convicted cop-killer Mumia
Abu-Jamal, whom it described as a “political prisoner” whose
case was inextricably linked to “police brutality,” and who
represented “an important voice of resistance and truth for
communities of color.”

STORM established
a “Revolutionary Youth Movement” Work Group “to support the
development of a revolutionary internationalist trend of youth
organizations in the Bay.” This quickly developed into STORM’s
largest Work Group, accounting for more than half of all the
organization’s members.

In
1999 STORM formed a Culture & Propaganda Work Group (CPWG)
“to nurture new revolutionary art and artists”; “produce
street-level agitation and propaganda”; “bring cultural workers
into political action”; and “build networks among revolutionary
cultural workers.” In the summer of 1999, CPWG members participated
in a “Venceremos Brigade” that traveled to Fidel
Castro’s Cuba “to see and support one of the world’s few
surviving socialist states.” Those members “came back with a
heightened understanding of both socialism and capitalism and a
stronger commitment to red politics.”[1]

Emphasizing the
central role it wanted women to play in its revolutionary “struggles
against capitalism, colonialism and women’s oppression,” STORM
coined the slogan “Sisters
at the Center.” “A truly liberatory revolutionary feminism,”
said STORM, “must be based not only on an analysis of women’s
oppression, but also on deep analyses of white supremacy, capitalism,
imperialism, heterosexism and transgender oppression.”

STORM
also strove “to overcome
the individualistic and destructive tendencies that we are taught in
this [American] society.”

In late 1999, STORM members took
part in the violent anti-World Trade Organization protests and riots
in Seattle, Washington.

On the morning of September 11, 2001,
STORM, knowing “that the fall of the World Trade Center [which had
just occurred] would mark a dramatic shift in international and
domestic politics,” convened in Oakland for an emergency meeting to
plan a vigil they would hold that night in the city’s Snow
Park. According to a 2004 document
published by former members of STORM, the 9/11 event was attended by
hundreds of people including several STORM members who “articulated
a strong anti-imperialist line” that expressed anger at “the U.S.
government, whose worldwide aggression had engendered such hate
across the globe that working class people were not safe at home.”
The vigil also “honored those who had lost their lives in the
attack – and those who would surely lose their lives in subsequent
U.S. attacks overseas.”

Two days later, STORM issued a
statement
warning “against a government crackdown on civil liberties”;
asserting that “the violence and injustice of U.S. imperialism”
had “put the entire world in danger”; expressing opposition to
“racist, anti-Arab bigotry” in the form of “stereotypes and
scapegoating” by “the media and government”; and calling for
“solidarity and compassion” directed toward all victims of
American injustice around the globe.

In the early 2000s,
STORM was active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized
by International
ANSWER.

In December 2002, STORM dissolved
due to internal tensions and rivalries. In 2004, a number of STORM's
former members collaborated to publish a booklet titled Reclaiming
Revolution,
wherein they recapped their own organizational history – in hopes
that their reflections and observations would help "move
the Left forward."

STORM's most notable leader
was Van
Jones, a revolutionary communist who would go on to become
President Barack
Obama's “Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and
Innovation” in 2009.

NOTE:

[1]
The Venceremos
Brigades covertly transported hundreds of young Americans to Cuba to
help harvest sugar cane and interact with Havana’s communist
revolutionary leadership. The Brigades were organized by Fidel
Castro's Cuban intelligence agency, which trained "brigadistas"
in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and
explosives.